'The biscuits was Mr. Calder's idea,' Matthew said over his shoulder as he carried a plate of four biscuits to Jeff Calder's table. 'He said biscuits might be a good idea, didn't you, sir?'
'Well… there ain't nothing wrong with having biscuits for breakfast!' the old man declared in a tetchy tone that dared anyone to suggest there was.
Mr. Delanny received his plate of two biscuits with a half-cynical, half-admiring shake of his head.
'Mr. Calder told me you usually only take coffee in the morning, sir. But I thought maybe…?'
'You're some piece of work, you are.'
Matthew smiled. 'That's the way it is with us chameleons. More coffee, sir?'
'To go with my biscuits? Sure, why not?'
Queeny grabbed Matthew's arm as he passed on his way back to the kitchen. 'You know what you are, kid? You're a goddamned treasure, that's what. Biscuits! And bacon that ain't burned to a crisp… for once! You'd make some woman an A-number-one wife!' She hooted with laughter that produced a fine spray of biscuit.
'You keep this up, boy,' Frenchy said, 'and who knows? You might win my heart.'
Although she didn't raise her eyes to meet Matthew's, Chinky was making fast work of her biscuits too, a blessed change for a woman with an oriental palate who had been obliged to stuff down bacon and cheese and other disgusting Western flavors and textures.
'It was my ma taught me how to make them. I used to help her around the kitchen when she couldn't manage on her own.'
'O-o-o-o.' Queeny's downward-plunging note reflected both the moist sentimentality of the drunk and the theatrical emotionalism of a woman who, as she would tell anyone who would listen, had earned more than her fair share of fame as an entertainer on the stage. 'Well, you done right to help your ma. A body don't get but one mother in this life, and I don't care what anybody says. She's sickly, is she, your ma?'
'She passed on, ma'am. Just a few days ago.'
'O-o-o-o-o.'
'Yes, well… I keep reminding myself that she's beyond pain and trouble now. And that's a consolation.'
'O-O-o-o-o-o. Ain't that the truth? I always say, if there's one thing in this world-Hey! You could leave a few of those for someone else, Frenchy! You don't have to cram them all down your gullet! Honestly! Some people is just hogs!'
THENCEFORTH BISCUITS WERE A part of the morning routine at the Traveller's Welcome, as were a few minutes of bantering chat between Matthew and the girls. Frenchy had a wry, arid sense of humor, and his unconcealed appreciation of it caused her to try harder; Chinky would lift her eyes to exchange a fugitive smile for his facile one; and he always listened attentively to Queeny when she launched into her recollections of the good old days.
'Did I ever tell you about when I was a dancer, kid?'
'Only about two hundred million times,' Frenchy muttered as she devoured a biscuit.
'You should of heard the men hoot and whistle when I did my Dance of the Seven Veils!'
'It'd take seven bed sheets to cover you now.'
It amused Mr. Delanny to note how Jeff Calder, having reaped all the credit for the improvement in the quality of the breakfast, was willing to admit, albeit with reluctance, that the boy was 'a quick learner.' But even Mr. Delanny's eyes lost some of their habitual world-weary scorn when he looked up from playing two-handed solitaire with Frenchy and saw Matthew hard at work, humming to himself as he swept the floor or wiped up the tables with cheerful energy.
Matthew sensed that there was something between Mr. Delanny and Frenchy. She would occasionally sit at his table, and without a word he would sweep up the solitaire lay-out before him and deal out two-handed solitaire, which they would play in silence, a sharpness of concentration and a crispness of movement suggesting that each was eager to beat the other. They never spoke to one another, although a particularly unlucky run of cards might cause Frenchy to utter one of her succulently raunchy oaths that made even hardened miners blink and puff. When the game was over, she would leave the table, and Mr. Delanny would shuffle and lay out another game. No one else in the hotel ever dared to sit at Mr. Delanny's table. What was between them wasn't physical. It wasn't even friendship, in the ordinary way. But Matthew noticed that Frenchy always sat a little sideways at the card table, keeping the scarred side of her face away from Mr. Delanny. One night while he was pondering this strange relationship, muttering to himself as he always did when he was thinking things out, he decided that Frenchy and Mr. Delanny were like strangers passing time together while they waited for a train. 'Strangers who are going in the same direction, but not to the same place.' He was proud of that wording, and he remembered a teacher-the one who had given him her dictionary-once saying that he had a natural way with words. 'Two people going in the same direction, but not to the same place,' he repeated aloud. 'Now that makes a body think. It's… deep. You know, maybe one of these days I'll get myself some paper and a pen and write myself a book. Something like Mr. Anthony Bradford Chumms. But I'll make my hero different from the Ringo Kid, so's people won't think I'm copying. My hero will be left-handed, and he'll cross-draw. And he won't be from Texas, like the Ringo Kid. He'll be from… Canada! That'd make him a foreigner and totally different. And he'll ride a pinto, rather than Ringo's big gray. And he'll…'
Matthew's daily life soon assumed a rhythm. His morning work at the hotel turned out to be his principal source of income, because cleaning out the tubs and doing the barbershop was only a once-a-week chore, and the make-work jobs B. J. Stone and Coots scratched up for him never occupied more than five or six hours a week. Although his work at Kane's-the heavy tasks that Mr. Kane protested grumpily he could perfectly well do himself, but really couldn't because of chest pains- required only a couple of hours a day, the Mercantile became the hub of his life. He regretted that Mr. Kane never again talked about his early years as he had on that first night. Instead, soon after supper, he would say he was tired and would go to his bedroom while Matthew and Ruth Lillian were doing the dishes. Then the young people would sit on the porch for half an hour or so, looking out at the night sky above the foothills, enjoying the evening breezes, sometimes talking quietly, sharing vagrant wisps of thought that drifted into their minds, only rarely glancing at one another.
It was during one of these rambling chats that Matthew learned enough about Reverend Hibbard's weakness of the flesh to arm himself against their first encounter. He was surprised at the matter-of-fact way Ruth Lillian spoke of the hotel as a 'whorehouse.'
And impressed, too.
THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER he had tugged his mother's comb through his wet hair, winking and flinching each time it stuck in a tangle, Matthew swilled his wash-up water around the basin, bumped his front door open with his hip, and threw the water…
… right onto the boots of Reverend Leroy Hibbard, who was standing with his fist raised to knock at the door.
'Hey! Watch what you're doing, boy!'
'Oops, sorry! Didn't know you were there.'
'That ain't no excuse! I ought to box your ears for you!'
Matthew looked up at the preacher for a moment, then answered in his soft Ringo Kid voice, 'Well, sir, maybe it ain't an excuse, but it's an honest explanation. I'm truly sorry I got your shoes wet. But as for getting my ears boxed? That ain't going to happen. It just naturally ain't going to happen. You hear what I'm saying to you?' His experiences of being the new boy in school after school had left him with an instinctive recognition of the bully, and this preacher was a bully. Matthew had learned that backing off from bullies only whets their appetite for abuse. He could feel himself slipping into what he called 'the Other Place,' his habitual retreat from danger and aggression. While in this Other Place he remained aware of everything going on around him; but events took on a dreamlike vagueness that stripped them of their menace. Matthew felt the profound safety of the Other Place begin to rise within him, as though drawn up through his spiritual wick.
When the Reverend snapped, 'What are you doing here, boy?' Matthew's eyes softened even more, and he smiled.
'Well, right now I'm fixing to go to work.'
'No, I mean what are you doing in the marshal's office?'
'I live here.'
'Oh, so you just moved in and took it over, is that it?'
'Yes, sir. Same as you did down to the depot.'
